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Macroinvertebrates, Watershed Imperviousness, And A Water Quality Index: A Confluence Of Georgia Adopt-A-Stream’S Volunteer Data, Christopher H. Kodani

Georgia Journal of Science

The relationship between a stream’s macroinvertebrate community as quantified by Georgia Adopt-A-Stream’s Water Quality Index and the impervious surface of an adopted stream’s watershed was weak. Although the average WQI decreased with increasing watershed imperviousness, the R² was only 8.3%--an admittedly poor fit. To further investigate, a more comprehensive analysis was performed using forward stepwise regression. This model, which included both imperviousness and the abundance of just 15 out of the 20 kinds of macroinvertebrates, achieved an R² of 59.4%. Imperviousness alone may not be a good predictor of WQI, but a combination of selected macroinvertebrate data and …